I've defined an expression tree structure in F# as follows:
type Num = int
type Name = string
type Expr =
| Con of Num
| Var of Name
| Add of Expr * Expr
| Sub of Expr * Expr
| Mult of Expr * Expr
| Div of Expr * Expr
| Pow of Expr * Expr
| Neg of Expr
I wanted to be able to pretty-print the expression tree so I did the following:
let (|Unary|Binary|Terminal|) expr =
match expr with
| Add(x, y) -> Binary(x, y)
| Sub(x, y) -> Binary(x, y)
| Mult(x, y) -> Binary(x, y)
| Div(x, y) -> Binary(x, y)
| Pow(x, y) -> Binary(x, y)
| Neg(x) -> Unary(x)
| Con(x) -> Terminal(box x)
| Var(x) -> Terminal(box x)
let operator expr =
match expr with
| Add(_) -> "+"
| Sub(_) | Neg(_) -> "-"
| Mult(_) -> "*"
| Div(_) -> "/"
| Pow(_) -> "**"
| _ -> failwith "There is no operator for the given expression."
let rec format expr =
match expr with
| Unary(x) -> sprintf "%s(%s)" (operator expr) (format x)
| Binary(x, y) -> sprintf "(%s %s %s)" (format x) (operator expr) (format y)
| Terminal(x) -> string x
However, I don't really like the failwith
approach for the operator
function since it's not compile-time safe. So I rewrote it as an active pattern:
let (|Operator|_|) expr =
match expr with
| Add(_) -> Some "+"
| Sub(_) | Neg(_) -> Some "-"
| Mult(_) -> Some "*"
| Div(_) -> Some "/"
| Pow(_) -> Some "**"
| _ -> None
Now I can rewrite my format
function beautifully as follows:
let rec format expr =
match expr with
| Unary(x) & Operator(op) -> sprintf "%s(%s)" op (format x)
| Binary(x, y) & Operator(op) -> sprintf "(%s %s %s)" (format x) op (format y)
| Terminal(x) -> string x
I assumed, since F# is magic, that this would just work. Unfortunately, the compiler then warns me about incomplete pattern matches, because it can't see that anything that matches Unary(x)
will also match Operator(op)
and anything that matches Binary(x, y)
will also match Operator(op)
. And I consider warnings like that to be as bad as compiler errors.
So my questions are: Is there a specific reason why this doesn't work (like have I left some magical annotation off somewhere or is there something that I'm just not seeing)? Is there a simple workaround I could use to get the type of safety I want? And is there an inherent problem with this type of compile-time checking, or is it something that F# might add in some future release?
If you code the destinction between ground terms and complex terms into the type system, you can avoid the runtime check and make them be complete pattern matches.
also, imo, you should avoid boxing if you want to be type-safe. If you really want both cases, make two pattern. Or, as done here, just make a projection to the type you need later on. This way you avoid the boxing and instead you return what you need for printing.